ESPN's "Interactive Tuesday" Is Not Very "Active"
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
I don't know how many people caught last night's thrilling victory by Middle Tennesse State over Florida Atlantic on ESPN2, but a new feature was debuted called "Interactive Tuesday". There were video clips, emails, soundbytes, votes and scrolling messages, and announcers Todd Harris and Ray Bentley constantly highlighted them throughout the game. There was only one small problem, apparently they were unedited before being displayed and some of the more asinine moments were caught by Complain In Vain....
(1) First, we saw the following message scroll atop our screen from a watcher named Landry Arnett: “sec title game: bama and lsu forget florida who loses to ole miss.” So, Landry had to take the time to sit down at his computer and write this, but not once consider is that is even a possibility? Seriously, there is 0% chance that these two teams could meet in the SEC title. None, nada. LSU is in the SEC West, Alabama is in the SEC West.All hilarious moments, but nothing was better than the voting process. At multiple times throughout the night, both Harris and Bentley tried to use results from polls to add excitement, but when only 1,338 people vote on a poll that was posted in the second quarter....it's probably not the best idea to highlight that at the end of the game....
(2) Next, another message scrolls atop the screen. This one is not quite so offensive, but we do appreciate misuse of the English language. This was from texaswinbig12: “I think that Texas is a very good team this year even better then Bama.”
In the end, Middle Tennessee (nicknamed the Blue Raiders) won on a pretty exciting Hail Mary play as time expired. Just after the 32-yard game-winning touchdown pass was brought down by the receiver, Harris exclaims, “And the Blue Raiders snatch defeat from…[trails off]” then comes back with “Blue Raiders win!”
It seems like a fun idea in theory, and maybe ESPN is testing it out on lesser viewed games first, but they might want to work out some of the kinks before trying it again. Either that or just lie about the number of voters at the end of the night. That's just embarrassing.
Interactive Tuesday (for idiots) (Complain In Vain)
11 Comments:
I only caught the fourth quarter and it looked like a trainwreck. This idea should be axed. No one extra is going to watch a game because joeboy123 or whatever has a comment scrolling across the top of the screen. I also noticed the amount of votes at the end and laughed.
If I was a fan of one of those two teams, I would be ashamed at what ESPN pulled last night.
Also, Todd Harris should never do PBP again.
Also, Todd Harris should never do PBP again.
And to think, ABC pushed Paul Page off the Indy 500 to make room for Harris a few years ago. Now, Todd's so low on the totem pole, I don't even know if he still does World's Strongest Man episodes.
Maybe it wasn't very active because it wasn't advertised too much. I never heard anything about it during 1st and 10, rome, pti, sportscenter, etc. I only knew about it when I tuned in after the White Sox game.
On the comment about the SEC title game, it could be that the person wasn't talking about Alabama and LSU playing against each other in the game.
They could've been talking about that either of them won't be playing against Florida.
But if you know what the comment is actually saying, it's not as funny.
Can we at least agree that Ray Bentley is God awful???
haha 1,383 votes? thats less then the people in my high school class
and its always less then the amount of peoplethat live in the state that palin governs
Best (or worst, depending on your P.O.V.) Todd Harris moment was during the '05 Indy 500 as Danica was leading...
"Can she turn the trick and win the Indy 500?"
I'm sure you all would recognize the certainly inadvertent double-entendre by Mr. Harris...
Way to go Texas fan. I love the Texans as an LDS missionary in the city of El Paso several years back and while there are many great, articulate, God-fearing people I know in Lone Star country, you're one who makes things bad for the entire group. We use the word "very" far too much in our everyday lexicon.
Harris is not my favorite but he is solid with what those scmucks at espn give him! Dont get me wrong I love the HOT Babe on the sideline but come on enough of the stupid ass window dressing and give us someone who actually played the game!
Towards the end of the game.... They re-did the SAME poll about every 4 minutes of game time. I swear after every series, "So let's poll again, can MTSU win???" And the poll numbers didn't exactly skyrocket towards the end, either...